


A Hole A Lifetime Deep

by Combination_NC



Category: Original Work/Crossover
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, Depression, F/F, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, Grief/Mourning, Helios - Freeform, Hope, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Relationship, Mental Anguish, Mental Illness, POV First Person, Self-Discovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-07 17:42:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Combination_NC/pseuds/Combination_NC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Pieces of experiences and fragments of love and of regret as well as them tangled together, invading the darkness of the back of your eyelids as you take that final step off the ledge to fall into a nothing that is less nothing than what is left of what once was you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A hole a lifetime deep

I was so young the first time I met her that the instant attraction was not yet a physical one; that was something that would come later. But when I met her there was something  _there_. Something about her that made her brighter than anyone, more interesting than anyone, more important and more beautiful. What did I care about beauty standards then, when she uttered words more beautiful than any living person? And why would I care about those beauty standards now, when they so nearly destroyed her? Why would I ever care about anything else than what I sensed the first time we met?

She cut her hair short.

She grew her hair out long.

She shaved it all off.

She has a stubble covered skull instead of a stubble covered chin.

Her skin will never be what they call unblemished again, not with so much inner turmoil given voice on her flesh. Her mind will never be free of troubles, but what do I care about that, beyond wanting to ease her burdens and kiss it all better?

What do I care about looks? How could something so trivial ever matter next to something so grand as what she let me see of her mind and of her heart?

None of those outside things mattered then, and they never, ever will. When I looked at her, I saw what I thought was all that I ever wanted.

I am older now, and I want more in and from life than her, but I do not love her any less. I want to wrap my arms around her in front of a mirror, to look at us together, to have it  _be_  an us as well as a together.

There is not. I have so much more in my life now, but without her, in a way it somehow feels like less.

I have always had a hole in me, a hole a lifetime deep. It is not a hole that can ever be filled, not with things or by a person.

But surely, when I had her so close, it was not as wide as it is now.


	2. The same letter

We met when we were ten, years before the world of adults bestowed their heavy words on what we came to have, but my eyes always searched for her; in the classroom and hallways, on breaks and during lunch, and when she looked up to have hers meet mine there was nothing that mattered more. Our first talks were shy and hesitant, but I could not do anything but seek her out again and again, until what was already there, natural as air, became the foundation on which to build something that would last my lifetime.   
  
She moved away much too soon, and in my own way I followed. Whenever she came to visit I had to be near her as much as I could, called by  _something_  to get close. Later I found theatre with her, and for one day each week for years we had that time together, and in those days we found each other in ways that I had wanted from the moment we met.   
  
I used to write her letters that turned so long they became something else entirely. We knew each other from letters for the years when circumstances forced us physically apart, each day a page and onwards for her and only her, filled with things that only she would ever be told, and things she had to know.   
  
The first time I visited another country, a week spent far away from her, I wrote her a notebook full of letters under the Mediterranean sun. People thought of me as someone writing a diary, eagerly putting new memories down, and while it might as well have been one for all the intimacy and soul those pages contained, it was all for her. Just as other people might tell a diary everything, I could tell her of all that my heart held, and for that one week I filled over a hundred pages with dreams and hopes to hand her when I got back.   
  
When she was hospitalised for the first time, she wrote a notebook of letters to me, even as we exchanged the usual ones. And when she came home again, she handed her struggles and hopes over to me, her words my greatest treasure.   
  
One day a letter arrived that changed my life forever; a page of loving words and hopes, but hopes for me  _alone_  and not for her, not ever again. A plea for the promise to live and to be happy without her and not go down the road she had chosen; words written under the influence of too many pills, enough to make her believe that she would never awaken again.   
  
I slept with that letter under my pillow for weeks, even as she woke up. And I promised. I promised her in my heart as I read what she thought would be her last words to me, and I promised her again and again, in letters of a better nature as well as against her lips. I promised her to live and to find happiness, to not take the road of those pills for such reasons, and I could never break a promise instantly made by the heart.   
  
But I never promised I could be a whole person without her.   
  
I still write her letters, enough pages from notebooks to fill a novel of a love not quite lost; because even after so many years I could never let go of my love for her. She was the first in so many ways, the first those three most important words were ever spoken to and the first to be so close, the closest two people can be. The first to whisper promises to, the first to exchange words and touches, acts of  _love_ . Our letters were the path to all of that, and that the two words start with the same letter has always been something precious to me, something meaningful and close to the heart.   
  
I never send those letters any longer. At some point I put fewer words to paper and left more in my heart, and at another I wrote more letters in my head than with paper and pen. But in my head I still write her every day. I think about what I want to write before I fall asleep, how I want the sentences to flow and what feelings to call upon, but I no longer know how to put them down and send them to her.   
  
I have so many words left in me that are made and meant for her; but not the ones to call her back, or the courage to find them.


	3. Love is a promise

I have a red box hidden away in a closet; a box the colour of fate, its contents the result of said fate’s course. It is not a precise thing, this fate, and not something I put more faith in than this; a person like me was meant to meet a person like her. What we did with that meeting and if we were to turn one into more would be up to us, but I was to meet and hear the echo of my soul in another person.  
  
And I met her, and I heard.  
  
And when I heard, I followed.  
  
I followed the sound of her through years, content to follow and eager to be whatever she wanted me to be until I realised that what she wanted was  _me_ , and what I truly wanted was to walk beside her instead of following. What I wanted was not to blindly please, but be someone worthy to walk right next to.  
  
I do not know how I managed to grow to be such, but somehow I did, because when I had the strength to tell her of the echo in her she told me of the echo in me. I knew then I was on a path I never wanted to leave, and that I could never be one to settle for simply following again. Why hurry after someone’s back instead of having your shoulders touch and fingers entwine? Why keep that distance instead of closing it, why not grow and be strong and together?  
  
Then she deemed me strong enough to leave behind in life with the request for a promise that once made would stretch across a lifetime.  
  
I keep that almost last letter in my red box that I open less and less. I keep almost all our letters there, years of love and longing, red ink faded like string stretched too thin but still unbroken.  
  
Because for all the less and less, I still open the box at times to take the letters out and hold her close in the only way I can now, and that one makes me cry more than most others. It is that one, and the one that is more a manuscript than a letter. She wrote proper manuscripts more than once, but the one she sent to me had  _me_  in it. Me and her joy of hearing the echo of herself in me, as well as the observation that I was the one that harboured a deeper darkness.  
  
I look at it now, the most well worn page of them all, and I wonder. If I carry the greater darkness within me, why give me more to carry? If you saw my burdens as the heavier ones, why add to that weight? When  _I_ am the one  _trapped_ , why are you the only one allowed to attempt to make the final escape? Why call that vow from me while tearing yourself from my side? Why see me as so strong as to be able to go on for a lifetime alone?  
  
There is helplessness and tears, no anger and no bitterness; it was not then, only horror and fear, and now there is only sorrow and longing wrapped up in loneliness.  
  
I do not want to scream, only cry and ask  _why_. Why have me be so strong? I am not, I am not that strong at all, not for the lifetime you asked me for.  
  
But I will keep that promise until I am so worn down that I am no longer me, because my love is that promise.


End file.
